American Rescue Plan Act funds<\/mark><\/a>. The $250,000 was earmarked to keep certain services running for an additional four months, which would have taken the nonprofit up to its next fiscal year, where it had budgeted for taking over funding those services. <\/p>\n\n\n\n\u201cAn executive order pulled back those funds earlier than anticipated,\u201d Schaffer said. \u201cThe remaining amount of funds that any organization that was benefiting from those that came through the state and the Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services, they no longer had access to those funds, because those were pulled back to not be spent.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Founded in 1993, the Mental Health Cooperative is Nashville\u2019s eighth-largest nonprofit, with $83.13 million in revenue and $131.07 in total assets in 2023, according to Business Journal research. The cooperative operates 12 clinics throughout Middle, West and East Tennessee, including Nashville\u2019s first 24\/7 Walk-in Crisis Treatment Center. The nonprofit receives funding from opioid settlement dollars, metro, state and federal grants in additional to payment for services from TennCare. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\nPulling the remainder of the Covid funds caused the Mental Health Cooperative to move funding around and pushed timelines for other initiatives, according to Schaffer. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI wouldn’t say that I feel like it put us significantly behind, but it did impact how we move things around and timelines for sure,\u201d Schaffer said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Those funds were set to run out at the end of this fiscal year, according to Schaffer, so the Mental Health Cooperative already had a plan in place on how it was going to continue to provide services covered by the grant. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cNontraditional ways of thinking about things like … if we combined resources in a way that met the needs of both organizations at a reduced cost because we\u2019re both sharing the cost, would that help your operating margin?\u201d Schaffer said. \u201cThat\u2019s what I mean, those kind of conversations not only in health care delivery but in other ways to help make sure that we sustain each other because our communities need us.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
View on Nashville Business Journal<\/mark><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Nikki Ross \u2013 Reporter, Nashville Business Journal May 28, 2025 CEO Michelle Schaffer fears the unknown. It\u2019s a sentiment many in the nonprofit health care space are feeling as federal funding cuts hit and further cuts loom on the horizon. \u201cThe thing that is most concerning to me \u2026 is the instability in knowing how that\u2019s all […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":2841,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"news_category":[],"class_list":["post-2840","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mhc-tn.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/2840","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mhc-tn.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mhc-tn.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mhc-tn.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mhc-tn.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/2840\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2861,"href":"https:\/\/mhc-tn.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/2840\/revisions\/2861"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mhc-tn.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2841"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mhc-tn.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2840"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news_category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mhc-tn.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news_category?post=2840"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}